force" is breathed, what "new life is infused" into them by the "wonderful words" of the Prophet, or what lasting good the " age of active principles" has produced.

4. Qíás is the fourth foundation of Islám. The word literally means reasoning, comparing. It is in common use in Hindustani and Persian in the sense of guessing, considering, &c. Technically, it means the analogical reasoning of the learned with regard to the teaching of the Qurán, the Sunnat and the Ijma'. For example, the Qurán says:"Honour thy father and thy mother and be not a cause of displeasure to them." It is evident from this that disobedience to parents is prohibited, and prohibition implies punishment if the order is disobeyed. Again, if the Qurán and the Sunnat hold children responsible, according to their means, for the debts of their father, does it not follow that the elder ones ought to fulfil for their parents all those obligations which for some reason or other the parents may not be able to perform, such as the pilgrimage to Mecca, &c. A Tradition said to come from the Companions runs thus:" One day, a woman came to the Prophet and said, 'my father died without making the Pilgrimage.' The Prophet said, 'If thy father had left a debt what wouldest thou do.' 'I would pay the debt.' Good, then pay this debt also." The Qurán forbids the use of Khamar, an intoxicating substance, and so it is argued that wine and opium are unlawful, though not forbidden by name. The Wahhábís would extend the prohibition to the use of tobacco.

From cases such as these, many jurisconsults hold that the Mujtahidín of the earliest age established this fourth foundation of the faith which they call Qíás. It is also called I'tibár-ul-Amsál, or "imitation of an example." The idea is taken from the verse: " Profit by this example, ye who are men of insight" (Súra lix. 2). There are strict rules laid down which regulate Qíás, of which the most important is, that in all cases it must be based on the Qurán, the Sunnat, and the Ijmá'. In fact, the fundamental idea of Islám

is that a perfect law has been given, even unto details, of social and political life. The teaching of Muhammad contains the solution of every difficulty that can arise. Every law not provided by the Prophet must be deduced analogically. This produces uniformity after a fashion, but only because intellectual activity in higher pursuits ceases and moral stagnation follows. Thus all who come within the range of this system are bound down to political servitude. Whatever in feeling or conviction goes beyond the limits of ar out-worn set of laws is swept away. There is a wonderful family likeness in the decay of all Musalmán States, which seems to point to a common cause. All first principles are contained in the Qurán and the Sunnat; all that does not coincide with them must be wrong. They are above all criticism.

In

Qíás, then, affords no hope of enlightened progress, removes no fetter of the past, for in it there must be no divergence in principle from a legislation imperfect in its relation to modern life and stationary in its essence.1 the Niháyat-ul-Murád it is written :-"We are shut up to following the four Imáms." In the Tafsír-i-Ahmadí we read:-"To follow any other than the four Imáms is unlawful." An objector may say that such respect is like the reverence the heathen pay to their ancestors. To this an answer is given in the preface to the Tarjuma-i-Sharh-i-Waqáyah. The writer there says that it is nothing of the kind. "The Mujtahidín are not the source of the orders of the Law, but they are the medium by which we obtain the Law. Thus Imám Abu Hanífa said: 'We select first from the Qurán, then from the Traditions, then from the decrees of the Companions; we act on what the Companions agreed upon; where they doubt, we doubt.' The Commentator Jelál-uddín Mahlí says, 'The common people and others who have

1. The Muslim 'Ulamá are certainly much fettered by their religion in the pursuit of some of the paths of learning; and superstition sometimes decides a point which has been controverted for centuries. Lane's Modern Egyptians, vol. i. p. 269.

not reached the rank of a Mujtahid, must follow one of the four Imáms.' Then when he enters one Mazhab (sect) he must not change. Again, it may be objected that God gave no order about the appointment of four Imáms. Now, it is recorded in a Tradition that the Prophet said, 'Follow the way of the great company; whosoever departs from it will enter hell.' The Followers of the Imáms are a great company." It is moveover the unanimous opinion, the “Ijmá’i-Ummat," that the Imáms rightly occupy the position accorded to them. It is a great blessing, as we read in the Tafsír-i-Ahmadí: "It is of the grace of God, that we are shut up to these four Imáms. God approves of this, and into this matter proofs and explanations do not enter." Should any one further object that, in the days of the Prophet, there were no Mujtahidín, that each man acted on a saying" as he heard it, that he did not confine his belief or conduct to the deductions made by some "appointed Companion," he may be answered thus :-" For a long time after the death of the Prophet many Companions were alive, and consequently the Traditions then current were trustworthy; but now it is not so, hence the need for the Imáms and their systems."

These four foundations,-the QURAN, the SUNnat, Ijma' and Qíás-form in orthodox Muslim opinion and belief a perfect basis of a perfect religion and polity. They secure the permanence of the system, but they repress an intelligent growth. The bearing of all this on modern politics is very plain. Take again the case of Turkey. The constitution of the Government is theocratic. The germs of freedom are wanting there as they have never been wanting in any other country in Europe. The ruling power desires no change; originality of thought, independence of judgment is repressed. Nothing good has the Turk ever done for the world.1 This rule has been one continued display of brute

1. The Goth might ravage Italy, but the Goth came forth purified from the flames which he himself had kindled. The Saxon swept Britain, but

force unrelieved by any of the reflected glory which shone for a while in Cordova and in Baghdad. No nation can possibly progress, the foundations of whose legal and theocratic system are what has been described in this chapter. When brought into diplomatic and commercial intercourse with States possessing the energy and vigour of a national life and liberal constitution, Muslim kingdoms must, in the long run, fail and pass away. It has been well said that "Spain is the only instance of a country once thoroughly infused with Roman civilisation which has been actually severed from the empire; and even then the severance, though of long duration, was but partial and temporary. After a struggle of nearly eight centuries, the higher form of social organisation triumphed over the lower and the usurping power of Islám was expelled." So it ought to be, and so indeed it must ever be, for despotism must give way to freedom; the life latent in the subject Christian communities must sooner or later cast off the yoke of a barbarian rule, which even at its best is petrified and so is incapable of progress. However low a Christian community may have fallen, there is always the possibility of its rising again. A lofty ideal is placed before it. All its most cherished beliefs point forward and upward. In Islam there is no regenerative power. Its golden age was in the past. When the work of conquest is done, when a Muhammadan nation has to live by industry, intelligence and thrift, it always miserably fails.

In this chapter which must now draw to a close, I have tried to prove from authentic and authoritative sources that

the music of the Celtic heart softened his rough nature, and wooed him into less churlish habits. Visigoth and Frank, Heruli and Vandal, blotted out their ferocity in the very light of the civilisation they had striven to extinguish. Even the Hun, wildest Tartar from the Scythian waste, was touched and softened in his wicker encampment amid Pannonian plains; but the Turk-wherever his scymitar reached-degraded, defiled, and defamed ; blasting into eternal decay Greek, Roman and Latin civilisation, until, when all had gone, he sat down, satiated with savagery, to doze for two hundred years into hopeless decrepitude. Lieut.-Col. W. F. Butler, c. B., in Good Words for September 1880.

the Qurán alone is to no Muslim the sole guide of life. The fetters of a dogmatic system fasten alike around the individual and the community. Islám is sterile, it gives no new birth to the spirit of a man, leads him not in search of new forms of truth, and so it can give no real life, no lasting vitality to a nation.1

1. "The Muslim every where, after a brilliant passage of prosperity, seems to stagnate and wither, because there is nothing in his system or his belief which lifts him above the level of a servant, and on that level man's life in the long run must not only stagnate but decay. The Christian, on the other hand, seems every where in the last extremity to bid disorganization and decay defiance, and to find, Antæus-like, in the earth which he touches, the spring of a new and fruitful progress. For there is that in his belief, his traditions, and in the silent influences which pervade the very atmos. phere around him, which is ever moving him, often in ways that he knows not, to rise to the dignity and to clothe himself with the power which the Gospel proposes as the prize of his Christian calling. The submissive servant of Allah is the highest type of Moslem perfection; the Christian ideal is the Christ-like son."-British Quarterly, No. cxxx.